HERE'S one type of jaguar you rarely see purring along on the road…

A mother big cat shows her pace and power as she steers her family of three cubs across a major new highway.

The spotted felines, camouflaged for secretive lives hunting on the dappled rainforest floor, look forlornly out of the comfort zone as they work their way across the asphalt and between a line of traffic cones.

Together, the mother and her cubs represent two per cent of the entire population of jaguars that still stalk Brazil’s Atlantic rainforests around the famous Iguaçu Falls.

Being hunted for their iconic pelts pushed jaguars towards extinction across Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s, while today the felling of huge rainforest trees in the name of development continues to put a question mark over species’ future.

These images, taken by Carmel Croukamp of Parque das Aves, represent the first time jaguars have been pictured in southern Brazil and give conservationists hope numbers can continue to be nurtured after their rainforest haunts have shrunk to a mere seven per cent of the original range.

Dr Valeria Boron, regional manager for Brazil and Amazon at WWF, said: “Jaguars are icons of Latin America and are mainly threatened by habitat conversion driven by agricultural and cattle ranching expansion, and poaching.

“In the Atlantic Forest, they have nearly been wiped out. The sighting of these three cubs is heartening news for jaguar conservation.

"But we still know so little about the elusive cats and need to take urgent action to limit deforestation to make sure these cubs, and the forest, have a chance.”

Inside the Iguaçu National Park, jaguar numbers have shown a marked increase in recent times, with an estimated 71 to 107 individuals last year, a 30 per cent rise on 2014 figures.